


He Ain't Heavy (He's Our Villain)

by goodboots



Series: Villain 'Verse [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Darcy & Loki being codependent bros, Darcy has Ikea skills, Gen, I don't know how this happened?, Loki as an assistant Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 08:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Thor is foolishly loyal, Darcy still wants her iPod back, and Loki redeems himself, or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Ain't Heavy (He's Our Villain)

**Author's Note:**

> So despite watching Thor and thinking "Man, Loki is a jerk," and then watching The Avengers and really thinking "Okay but seriously, Loki is a complete jerk," I still want good things to happen to him. Apparently I'm that writer. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, etc., etc.

The Avengers don't know how to deal with demi-gods with family issues, but they'll give it a shot anyway. 

At least that's what Steve promises Thor as they leave the Shawarma place and head back uptown. SHIELD's putting the Asgardian up for -- well, indefinitely, now that he's agreed to be part of Earth's mightiest protective force, but they won't let him see his brother yet.

Loki's in custody, was spirited off to some terrifyingly secure jail cell for the time being, though it's not like they need to worry about him for a couple days after the injuries the Hulk inflicted (not to mention the shell-shock). They led him out of Stark Tower in manacles, his shuffling walk prodded on by a furious -- huh -- Nick Fury.

This is after the big news of the night, that Agent Coulson's alive after all, seriously injured but expected to recover; that Nick Fury's actually a lying bastard and they'll all think twice about taking him at his word again, even if he is in charge of them for the time being. The stunt with the trading cards was cold.

Still, everything that happened seems less dire, and the city exhales. Yes, a madman killed upwards of a hundred people, but New York wasn't destroyed by nuclear weapons, Iron Man miraculously survived, and the Earth is safe, for awhile at least.

And they're all pretty tired, can barely chew their way through their sandwiches; Steve figures somebody that isn't him will deal with the god problems tomorrow.

\--

A lot happens in the days after the battle. The world knows about them now, about heroes, and there is backlash -- of course there is, they're an unstoppable fighting force and that's gonna scare some people. Some people ought to be scared.

The world knows about aliens too, and that's a whole other can of worms. The President makes a hasty address on primetime TV that outlines the situation, highlighting the bravery of the American people. Steve and Thor have to go up there and stand beside him, not as Steve and Thor but as Captain America ("I'm a huge fan," Obama tells him) and the God of Thunder, a visual reminder to the viewers that not all otherworlders are out to destroy Manhattan, and the country seems to take it all in stride.

Behind the scenes, SHIELD gets a boatload more funding from Congress, and Asgard and the other realms are officially classified as foreign powers, along with any so-far undiscovered worlds/planets/whatever.

The upshot of all that change is that The Avengers have to start being _The Avengers_ , all capitalized, all team, all the time.

They're on the cover of _Time_ , of _Newsweek_ , and this is not what any of them expected (except possibly Tony, who's used to seeing his own face on magazines) but they adapt in their own ways.

Natasha turns down _Playboy_ , Bruce and Tony jointly publish an article on gamma photons that's hailed as revolutionary by the scientific community, and Steve admits that the twenty-first century might not be the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Thor's in a bleak mood for nearly a month, and it doesn't break until Fury shows up at Stark Tower with something he claims will "cheer him the fuck up."

It's Jane Foster, freshly released from the secure research facility in Canada where she's been hiding out for months,  and Thor can't stop grinning for days.

\---

The problem with reclassifying Asgard as a foreign power, even though that's what made the most sense to a deeply befuddled Senate Committee at the time, is that foreign powers have autonomy, and their citizens have rights. Even murderous criminals.

Nobody thought about that until Thor brings it up to Bruce -- "Does not my brother deserve a trial by judgement of his peers, as the people of Midgard deem appropriate?"

Bruce is stumped for a moment, and then Thor explains that his girlfriend's assistant -- the little dark haired chick who followed Jane off the SHIELD 'copter, if Bruce is remembering correctly -- has been showing him "a fine entertainment called _Law & Order_," and then he knows they're in deep trouble.

Bruce goes straight to Steve (he's their fearless leader, right?) and tells him about this in such a way that makes it into Steve's problem, because he's been hanging around Tony too much and it's making him a bit of an asshole.

\--

Steve takes it to Fury, mostly because Jane can't be at Thor's side twenty-four hours a day, and whenever she's not around he backslides into the most awful, silent depression Steve's seen since the army.

It's not that any of them want Loki to go free -- very adamantly, all the Avengers and the entire world would like him locked away for the rest of forever. But Thor deserves an explanation about why his brother can't be tried.

The answer Fury gives him is not what Steve expected.

"We can't try him because we can't get a jury of his peers, because his peers are motherfucking Frost Giants, and the little maniac broke the only way to get at them."

Steve forgets how to speak for a second. "You're not serious."

"As a heart attack," he insists. "We can hold him indefinitely as a threat to the United States, not to mention the entire damn world, but we can't go beyond that until we consult with his government."

That means Odin.

Fury keeps talking for awhile after that, and Steve finally has to stop him and make him repeat himself, because there's just no way--

"He's got what?"

"Diplomatic. Immunity." Fury says it slowly, like he can't believe the words either. "He's still the crown prince of Asgard, apparently."

"He's _insane_ ," Steve feels obliged to point out. "He tried to destroy the planet for no reason."

"I'm not disagreeing with you. Ideally, I'd like to do to him what he almost did to Coulson, but the government thinks his old man might have some problems with that."

Oh, Thor's not going to like this at all.

\---

Thor doesn't like it. He doesn't like it so much that he nearly quits the team. Demands to see his brother then and there, and Fury is saved grievous bodily harm by virtue of the fact that he's twenty thousand miles away in the helicarrier when Steve tells him that that's impossible, Loki is currently locked up and will be for quite awhile.

Thor does a runner, and Steve finds him on the roof of the SHIELD facility, shouting up at the sky:

"Heimdall, I require assistance! Send Sif, send the Warriors Three, my brother must be avenged."

Steve suspects that that last word is there for his benefit, and it hits close to home. That's their job, right, doing the right thing, avenging the helpless? Not that Loki's helpless, but he is alone, and SHIELD seems content to leave him that way permanently.  And Steve spent the better part of a century on ice; thank God he can't remember it. If he did -- well, ageless psychopathic god of mischief or not, he wouldn't wish that kind of prolonged torture on anyone. Better death than that, though he's not going to phrase it that way to Thor.

"Thor, come on. We'll figure this out. We're not going to leave him there to rot."

"No? It's been made quite clear that he will never be released nor given hope of a pardon. What else is there to do but take action?"

Standing up there with Mjolnir raised to the sky, storm clouds coalescing above, Steve remembers that Thor grew up in the same war-hungry place as Loki. They seem very alike, right then, and Steve has to keep speaking, keep reassuring, just to lessen the anguish on Thor's face.

When he does eventually talk him down, Steve's made a half-dozen promises he's not sure how to keep, and Thor refuses to spend another night in SHIELD accommodation when they are "holding his kin hostage and denying him due process."

Steve sighs and takes him to Stark Tower, rides the elevator right up the freshly rebuilt penthouse-- the guy's got plenty of space, he'll never notice one thunder god hanging around.

\---

"There's an Asgardian in my fridge," Tony says to Pepper the next morning. "Did you put him there?"

Pepper frowns. "Captain Rogers brought him over while you were in the lab. I figured it'd be fine."

"He's on his third pack of Hot Pockets and it's 9AM, what part of this is 'fine'?"

"Thor's having some kind of a fight with SHIELD because they won't let him see his brother or give him a trial."

Tony demands to know who told Thor about trials, which is how Darcy Lewis ends up working for Stark Industries, more or less.

\---

Darcy's at her desk in the far corner of Jane's underground lab (or, fine, Stark Industries' underground lab) when Thor bursts in , shouting her name. The bursting in isn't new -- that's just kind of how he enters a room -- but the guy following him is, because holy shit, it's Tony Stark.

She's been drifting in the orbit of the Avengers for the last couple months, since Jane came back to Puente Antiguo to pack up her apartment and surprised Darcy on campus with a _Happy Almost Graduation_ ice cream cake. It was already half-melted in the sun, but it's the thought that counts, especially since she dropped in a casual "Hey, so, I'm moving to New York to try to fix the Bifrost and maybe work for SHIELD, do you want to come with?"

Duh. Jane's the big sister she never knew she needed, she would've followed her back to that boring as fuck molecular physics lab in Canada if she asked nicely. Plus, she needs her, because that girl might be the smartest person she's ever met, but she'd starve to death if Darcy didn't shove a scone and a cup of coffee at her every four hours.

That's why Darcy packed up her studio and shoved her boxes in with Jane and Erik's -- they ganged up on him a little bit, but there was no way they could leave him alone in New Mexico. Now it's the three of them, the sciencey musketeers, and it's been mostly okay. A little underwhelming, maybe; she was expecting more adventure. She'd even got her taser back from Coulson, just in case of emergency/gods that need knocking out. (Although that reminds her, he still has her ipod...)

But excitement? Not so much. She's been working in Stark/Avengers Tower for the better part of a month, but after she got the mini-tour that started at the doors to the lab and ended at her desk, she kind of stopped expecting to meet any of the other resident superheroes.

Well, clap your hands if you believe, because Tony Stark's standing over her desk, looking pissed as hell.

"You showed my Norse god _Law & Order_?"

She confirms this, more than slightly bewildered. She looks at Thor, who stares steadfastly back and explains that his brother deserves a trial.

"Oh, hon, that's not how it works in real life," she sighs.

"We need to work on the definition of _real life_ ," Selvig mutters from the other side of the lab, and disappears back into his office (no lonely desk for him) when she shoots over a glare.

"He's right though," says Stark. "If you guys were regular people instead of alien god kings, this would be a different kettle of crazy. Loki could get some counselling for his adoption issues and  it'd all be just dandy. Of course, then he wouldn't have tried to take over the planet, so he wouldn't need the counselling... " He frowns. "I might have fucked up the metaphoric resonance I was aim for, but you get the point."

Darcy's having trouble following this conversation at all. "That's his problem, that he's adopted? I'm adopted."

"That's -- wait, what? You are?"

"Yeah," she says, like this isn't potentially useful information. "It's no big thing. So are millions of people, you don't see them trying to take over the planet."

Thor and Stark share a look that she doesn't like one bit.

"Darcy," the latter says, "that's your name, right? How would you feel about coming to work for us?"

"I already work for you," she reminds him. "I'm Jane's assistant."

"But you're not a scientist, are you? You don't have the credentials to be in the lab at all. I could have you out of here in three seconds flat if I decided to care about that."

She narrows her eyes at him, and must look pretty pissed off, because Thor holds up both hands, a hang-on-there kind of gesture that's hilarious coming from the fightiest man she's ever met.  

"This is not the time for threats, my friend," he tells Stark.  "Darcy is essential to Jane's research, and more than capable of defending against your jibes."

She preens a little at that -- the Norse god thinks she can handle herself.

"However, I also believe it would be beneficial to have her speak with my brother. She is truly a voice of reason."

What the fuck _no_ , that's not even true.

"You want me to talk to him? Why?"

"You're adopted and well-adjusted, you know what he's going through."

This is like assuming everybody who lives in New York must know each other, the sort of logicless comment she's faced with far too often these days.

Stark stares her down, though, and she can see the shakiness in him, like he hasn't had a good sleep in days. Well, of course not; last she heard, Thor was crashing at his place.

"Fine, I'll give it a shot. I can at least talk to the little--your brother," she corrects swiftly, at Thor's glare. "I'll talk to him. But--"

Oh, this is the time to ask for stuff, isn't it? Tony Irresponsible Billionaire Dude Stark is asking her for help.

He catches her pause and sighs, but Thor is prepared.

"Name your price, Darcy Lewis. If you help Loki to find peace in his prison, I will see your wishes granted."

There's a joke on the tip of her tongue, but then remembers Thor hasn't seen _I Dream of Jeannie_ yet. She'll have to start him on it next week, once they finish season 10 of _CSI_.

There's no question of what to ask for. She's got a steady paycheque coming in every two weeks, but there are a couple minor annoyances she wouldn't mind taking care of right away.

"I've got student loans," she says, addressing Stark (for all his radical education in Midgardian culture has been working out, she doesn't know that Thor's going to understand the concepts of compound interest or graduate debt.) "About fifty grand of 'em. I'd like them to disappear."

She's not saying he has to pay them, but he probably could with the change in his pockets right now. And/or make a call and have her whole credit history reversed.

"Done," he shoots back.

That was way too easy.

"And, Jane's gonna need a new assistant. Like a real scientist who can actually help her, not just a new version of me to bring her coffee."

Thor nods. "Of course. We do not want Jane to suffer from your absence," which makes her a little sad because it looks like she's not going to be working in the lab for a while; maybe not ever again, if this rehabilitating villains thing takes. New career path?

"And -- last thing -- Agent Coulson still has my iPod. I want it back."

Thor chokes back a laugh, but Stark only exhales, nods.

"I'll see what I can do," he says, finally.

\---

 

"So is being adopted super weird in Asgard or something?"

They're across town, at the SHIELD holding facility (in Queens, of all places), and Stark's leading them through the security checks like he's walked through a metal detector every day of his life. He probably has, now she thinks about the monumental protections surrounding her favourite group of superheroes, but she wonders how that works with the arc reactor.

Thor clicks his teeth. "Not particularly. Many children are fostered, but most are raised with this knowledge from childhood. I think the problem may stem from our father's deception. Loki discovered his parentage accidentally, and has not taken the news well."

"That's rough. My dad took sat me down when I was like eight and laid it all out for me, but I think I just threw a tantrum, cried a bit and got over it. Might have smashed a lamp or two."

"My brother's reaction has been more severe," he says, darkly. Well, duh, destruction of midtown Manhattan was kind of a tip-off.

"He's got an inferiority complex," Stark mutters, staring down what she hopes is the last of the retinal scans. The laser sweeps over his face, and a few seconds later the huge steel door rises open, and they continue down the hallway. "Dude's pissy because he's the nerdy second kid, it's classic."

"He is also a jotun," Thor feels obliged to point out, and then has to explain about Jotunheim.

Darcy frowns. "So, what, he's like a different race than he thought?"

"Slightly more complicated," Stark allows.

"The jotun are monstrous destroyers," Thor adds. "They lack basic intelligence, and are unable to feel empathy. It is said that, if sliced open, a jotun will have brittle ice in place of a heart."

They both stare at him for a minute, because what do you say to that?

"That is what we have always been taught, at home. I do not believe a word of it now, but Loki himself well may."

Oh, Jesus Christ, she's got her work cut out for her.

"Fucking Asgard," she says, and hitches her bag up higher on her shoulder, resigns herself to getting no work done today. She lets them hustle her toward the holding cells.

\---

They're keeping him in what's got to the ninth or tenth basement level, and there's no way he's escaping unless the jotun are part mole and can tunnel their way out. Still, she freaks momentarily when Stark says he's not going into the cell with her.

"He did that mind control thingy on Hawkeye," she says. _Us Weekly_ had a six page 'insider report' on it last month, what with superheroes being the new celebs, and with more compelling drama too. "What if he pulls it on me?"

"He can't," Tony -- if he's calling her Darcy then she's calling him Tony, that's how it works -- says. "You didn't think we were only locking him up here with glass and bars keeping him in. We've been dosing him regularly with chemical inhibitors."

"He's drugged?"

"Not the way you're thinking of it. You know that scythe he was carrying around?" She did, vaguely, recall a scythe in all the action shots she glimpsed on CNN during the battle footage. "Banner knocked a couple molecules off of it and we broke them down even more, synthesized a nice anti-magic tranq out of it."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"He gets injected with it twice a day and nobody gets hurt. He's totally sapped. We've even had guards in with him, and he can't work that psychic bullshit."

Oh. Well, that kind of changed things.

Thor walks back out looking -- fuck, looking smaller, somehow, like he's been staring at the ground and his spine scrunched down a few notches.

"He has consented to speak with you, under duress." He claps a hand on her shoulder, encouraging. "Good luck."

The cell is not what she imagined -- it's not even a cell, really, more like a grim studio suite, twin bed with gray sheets and a blanket folded neatly at one end, card table with two chairs (for visitors, she supposes -- for Thor).  It reminds her of the freshmen dorms at college, cinderblock walls and lumpy mattress.

Loki's sitting on the bed, and he's wearing black pants and a button-down shirt. It's not an orange jumpsuit but those are definitely prisoner clothes. Also, a jumpsuit might be an improvement, because all-black is not a good look on this guy, with his skin tone.

"So, Thor wanted me to talk to you," she says, by way of introduction.

His snarling reply is a good indication that she's already fucked it up.

"Thor is a fool, and you are a waste of my time."

She fights an eye-roll, because this guy could crush her if he wanted to.On the other hand, she's positive Thor and Tony and probably five to ten heavily armed guards are hanging out on the other side of that two-way glass, and that makes her bold:

"Right, because you're so busy these days," she casts an encompassing arm around his cell, and it's true. "You might as well hear me out--"

"Why? What do you owe the mighty Thor that you've come to face the monster for him."

"Your brother's one of my closest friends," and, wow, that's actually true. Kinda nice. She makes a note to hug Thor when she gets out of here. "He thinks I can help, for some crazy-ass reason, and he asked me to talk to you. So I'm here, talking. It's pretty simple."

"He is not my brother."

Ouch.

"He feels like he is."

Loki doesn't say anything to that.

"I'm going to need a sign that you're listening here, Bowie. Nod along or something."

He looks up at her, and she wasn't expecting his too-blue eyes to lock on hers. She's seen Loki plenty of times -- in the newspaper recently, all those blurry photos of green and black that don't show much except what is, outwardly, just an angry man; and in New Mexico, when he destroyed the town and nearly killed Jane, almost broke Thor's heart twice over.

But she's never had his complete attention before, and the force of it is terrifying even though she's made a deal with herself where she's going to be friends with gods and superheroes and SHIELD and never be terrified of anything. She takes an involuntary step back, and they both frown.

"I don't understand why you're here, insolent human girl. You shouldn't be facing the monster."

She swallows and stares back at him for a long moment. Then she takes that step back (it belongs to her, not him), and starts again.

"My name is Darcy," she says.

And she tells him.

\---

She takes to visiting twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, keeps their  sessions to around an hour. The first three months he barely speaks, but that's fine. She's lived a relatively interesting twenty-three years, at least the way she spins it. There's probably no therapeutic value in hearing about her freshmen-year bout of mono, but she's not actually a therapist, so she's going to talk about whatever she wants.

Besides, if he's listening to and thinking about her for a couple hours a week, then at least he's not thinking about himself.

\---

Eleven months into his detention, and Thor comes up with an idea to help Loki integrate into Midgardian society.

"You shall work with us, instead of against us."

Loki's on the verge of mentioning that he hasn't worked against anyone in ages, by virtue of being locked up and magic-sapped and not having anything to do besides sleep and eat and read the reams of Norse mythology Jane periodically drops off for him.

"You will assist us with your mind, brother. You've always been the cleverer of us two."

He agrees because he's getting pathetically bored, locked away in his cell in the SHIELD facility.

It has nothing at all to do with the fact that Thor insists, relentlessly, on calling him _brother_.

And that's how Loki ends up as the first of the the second-string Avengers.

\---

Earth's Mightiest Heroes accepting help from a reformed (contained?) villain is kind of a big deal, so there's understandably a huge effort made to restrict that information. It takes almost four days for it to flower on the interoffice grapevine.

Darcy goes to Stark immediately after she hears. "I want him with me."

"You read the pamphlet on workplace interaction, Lewis. It's bad enough you have your dates on company time, but this is bordering on inappropriate."

"Oh fuck you," she says, in the way she probably shouldn't be talking to her boss.  

She likes to forget he's Tony Stark, _part-time superhero full-time asshole_ , and think of him specifically as Tony Stark, _occasional decent human being._

"He's not going to work with some SHIELD flunky. He's _really_ not going to work for Fury, and he's got way too much of a complex to take orders from Thor. But I'm supposed to be putting together this super-admin team," because she was, though Coulson had actually described it as _well-prepared support staff_ , "and I think Loki falls into that category."

Stark is staring at her. "And he'll contribute if you're his wrangler, that's what you're telling me?"

"Hell no, I can't promise anything like that. But he won't go on any murderous rampages, or hurt anybody we care about."

It's the _we_ that gets his eyes to soften, and he puts up a token fight for a few days -- there's a conference with Coulson and Hill, and she has to draft a proposal for Fury, but it all works out. She's starting to developing this terrifying theory that all things will work out okay in the end.

"You know, if things in my life keep being okay, I'm just going to expect everything to eventually be okay."

"That could end disappointingly," Jane notes.

"Yeah, but it could also keep on being okay."

\---

Loki's not sure when he started thinking of the second chair in his cell as _Darcy's chair_.

(He has seen enough of Midgard to understand that this is more comfort than most human prisoners would receive, in his situation. He takes that as proof that they are fearful of what Odin will do if they find out he has been mistreated, and he does not correct their misunderstanding. Odin would do nothing; he is less kin to the Asgardians than this horrible human girl is to him.)

He only has a handful of possessions in this world, and all of those meagre and cheap, gifted to him by SHIELD out of their concept of human decency. (It would be decent to let him go; he's already sworn never to set foot on Midgard again, if they only let him out.) By all right, both of the chairs should be his, but no. The one on the left is his, and the one on the right is where the human girl sits, when she comes to beg his help over Jane Foster's stalled research or Banner's limited understanding of gamma radiation.

It's mildly interesting work, at least; he has the answers they need, but not in the form they need them. The Asgardian knowledge of the universe is inherently different from the Midgardian view, but it all sprouts from the same tree, and he is still able to leap from branch to branch, link pyshics and magics and dreams and stars, if only inside his head.

Getting that knowledge down on paper in a way others can comprehend it is a challenge, but he welcomes it over abject boredom. Still, he's allowed to complain:

"I was once prince of Asgard, and now I am the humble servant of Darcy Lewis, the graduate student," he comments. "I did not think it possible to fall so far."

Darcy says, "I'm technically a drop-out, now, 'cause I followed Jane out here and never finished my thesis," and offers him a stick of gum.

Loki is unimpressed.

\--

Jane sends her over to Loki with a list of equations relating to the Bifrost. Darcy can't make head or tails of them, so she lets him puzzle them out and slumps in her chair and fiddles with her phone. (She's not sure this is an appropriate use of her work time, but what the hell? She's okay with playing glorified courier for the day). The guards don't even bat an eye anymore when she comes down here, but that might be because she's learned to bring donuts and coffee.

"This is a child's puzzle," Loki whines, scribbling down formulae in the margins. "Bring me something worth my time, if you brainless mortals must disturb me."

He's having a bad day; she can tell by his expression. Not quite crazy-eyes, but there's a definite leave-me-the-fuck-alone melancholic edge there.

Still, she's not letting a comment like that pass--

"Don't get your panties in a twist, Bowie. Helping us might bore the fuck out of you, but it's got to be better than lying on that bed all day and brooding."

He frowns at her and oooh, nice, the glare of doom. It kind of amazes her that she was ever scared of him, now that she's had to help him finish half his sudoku puzzles.

"You continue to call me that name. Why?"

Seriously? "Come on. Man from outer space with insanely sharp cheekbones. What else am I going to call you."

"But what does it mean?"

Her eyes light up alarmingly, and she pulls out her (brand new, goddamnit, because Coulson's forsaking all knowledge of what happened to her original) ipod.

"I've only got a couple albums on here, but I can bring you the cds next time."

He stares at her like she's crazy-- she's holding out one of the earbuds to him, the other about to go into her own ear -- and she deflates. "Or, you  know what, keep it for a bit, listen to it later. I should run these back to the lab anyway."

By the end of the day, he realises that he might not own that second chair anymore, but now he knows all the lyrics to _Rebel, Rebel_ and _Let's Dance_ , and he finds it a fair trade.

\---

That's kind of all Darcy was expecting to happen--honestly, making semi-friends with a depressed alien was more than she was prepared for, let alone liaising with one on a regular basis.

Of course, it's not like Stark tells her everything. Case in point, she doesn't know the real directive behind the Bifrost project 2.0 until it's too late.

\---

Jane figures out the equations right around Christmas.

It's a slapdash affair at Tony's mansion on Park Avenue, and rather secular, what with Darcy being Jewish and Thor being Asgardian and Tony claiming to be too debauched to touch religion with a ten-foot pole. His reputation gets a little tarnished that day, because Pepper accepts a bottle of mead from Thor around noon and spends the entire day endearingly tipsy, and Tony spends it at her side, bemused and protective.

Natasha calls just as they're about to sit down to dinner, and announces that she's stuck in customs at JFK (some tiny error with one of her false identities, and when she and Clint show up around eleven they are accompanied by a bemused Agent Coulson, who worked his bureaucratic magic and got her out in record time).

Coulson, it turns out, is Buddhist, though like all known personal details about their SHIELD liaison, no one is certain where this information came from.

They finally sit down to eat just after midnight, and it's only after desert and another glass of wine that Jane remembers to check the numbers crunching on her phone, and she lets out an excited yelp and hugs Thor and explains that it's done, it's finished, they'll have the bridge up and running in days.

"We'll go home," Thor announces to the (drunk, happy, slightly bewildered) table. "I will take him home, for his judgement. Our father will be fair."

Loki isn't there, because given the choice of ingesting a fresh, untested sort poison and being allowed out of his prison for a holiday he'd never heard of before or sleeping the day away undisturbed, he picked the later.

"Fine, be that way," Darcy says, showing up on Boxing Day without the promised copy of the _Lokasenna_.

"That is not what I requested," he notes, eyeing the stack of books she slides across the table.

She makes a face. "Jane and I think all that reading about yourself might be bad for your megalomaniac tendencies."

"I do not have-- what is this?"

"Something every angsty boy should read, " says Darcy, and lobs a fruitcake at him for good measure.

It hits him, God of Mischief, in the throat.

"Ten points!" she hollers, triumphant.

\---

Loki spends his last few days in the middle realm warped up in the blanket Darcy's mother knitted him ("she's worried you might be cold. Don't take it personally, she also sends Bibles to inmates and stuff, this is kind of her thing,") reading _Harry Potter_ , and contemplating what he's going to say to Odin when he's sent back to Asgard for execution.

He does not eat the fruitcake.

\---

The Einstein-Rosen Bridge opens January 2nd with an atmospherically unlikely thunderstorm in the dead of winter over New York City, and of course Darcy shows up to watch.

Loki looks more miserable than he did the first time they met in the cell under SHIELD, peaky and unsteady on his feet. He doesn't even look pleased to be outside for the first time in months, but that might have to do with Nick Fury walking close behind him, and a hundred-some SHIELD agents a few more feet back. Thor's close on his other side, one arm looped under his elbow.

Darcy's got a post-New Year's hangover, so she's sipping from a giant Starbucks rooibos tea while she stands well out of the way of the awkward procession. Probably she's not even supposed to be here, but the usual guards had hangovers too, and she brought coffee as an entry ticket.  

Thor spots her and waves, calls her over from the chain-link fence she's lingering by awkwardly.

"It was good of you to come and wish my brother farewell, Darcy Lewis," he says loudly.

She's learned to tell the difference between his _I-do-not-understand-your-odd-mortal-customs_ voice and the put-on _underestimate-me-I-dare-you_ tone, and it's definitely the second version he's using here.

Loki can tell too, because the corner of his mouth twitches with what, on anybody else, might be the start of a smile.

"Not much of a goodbye," she tells them both. "You'll be back."

Loki frowns at her. "You seem to have misunderstood what this is, Lewis. I am marching to my death."

She doesn't need to look at Thor to feel the eye-roll this elicits. "Sure. Nice to see the melodrama continues. Thor, can we have a minute?"

"What--" Fury starts, but Thor, gentleman he is, goes to stand between the two of them and the rest of the pathetic entourage. There's maybe fifteen feet of distance, but she's not particularly concerned about being overhead.

"Listen, I get that you're freaking out about seeing your folks and all, but come on."

"I am going to be punished," he snarls, "for my crimes."

"Good. You did some horrible, unforgiveable shit. But they're your family, asshole. Think about that.  If Odin's so all-powerful, couldn't have have, like, struck you dead already without getting up off his super-comfy throne?"

He doesn't say anything to that, and Thor comes back. There's a lot of nodding, a lot of solemn glances at the sky. She shuffles back to the fence and watches the SHIELD teams form a loose ring around the Asgardians.

Fury looks for a second like he wants to say something, make some kind of speech, but then adopts an aw fuck it expression and throws the switch. The sky crackles open, and then they're gone.

She sips her tea, and waits. She didn't buy a pull-out sofa for nothing.

\---

Darcy, it turns out, is mostly right, but Loki isn't wholly wrong.

Asgard doesn't want him back after all; not yet, not while he's still unstable and "so filled with rage the stars tremble at the sight of you," (Frigga says, pulling her son into an embrace so tight it hurts).

But they will not execute him. By all rights, they should. A proper warrior would, and that's all Odin really is -- a warrior king, ruling blood-thirsty hordes, claiming the sons of his enemies as spoils of war.

"Welcome home, son," Odin says softly, in greeting, and Loki wishes he were shouting so he wouldn't have to listen. Odin bellows battle-cries that don't matter, but whispers truths and judgements the realm would rather not hear; that's how it's always been, and how it continues to be.

This is not the judgement he expected, to be feasted and embraced and sobbed over. There are no hordes clamouring for his traitor's blood; as far as he can tell, most of the realm doesn't know he has returned. He sees only his family--not his family--your family, Darcy Lewis insists in his head--and a handful of servants, the Warriors Three standing guards outside the chambers. Sif he catches sight of out the corner of his eye, and he swears she's wearing a smile, but that can't be right.

They eat, and drink, and talk, and his mother's eyes are teary but she smiles wide at him regardless. Thor talks long about Jane, about the Avengers, and Loki eats the roasted boar, his favourite, and says very little.

\---

The judgement comes afterward. They take his strength. Odin holds the scythe that once belonged to him, presses it to the space over his heart, and Loki has a new guess of what his punishment is to be.

"Loki Odinson," he says, "you are exiled. For your sins, and your safety."

He can't stay on Asgard, not after what he's done. It still stings, but it is better than being dead.

"Thor Odinson," their father says, and passes the scythe harmlessly, ceremonially, in front of a smirking Thor. "You are exiled --"

No, no, that's not how this is supposed to go. The bridge is already readying, brightening, and this isn't what's supposed to happen.

"But," Loki starts, and they both glare and speak over him.

"You are exiled, for the time being, for -- oh, let's call it insolence. Take care of your brother."

\---

Thor helps him down the Bifrost, and sets him up on Darcy's couch. It's barely dark out, and they've been gone less than half a day, but Loki's clearly exhausted. He's shaky and shivering, and if he can hear them he gives no sign of it.

"Now what?" Thor asks the girl.

"Now he gets to have a life," she says, and the way she says it means there's a plan.

\---

Of course the plan is that he'll keep working for the Avengers --

"Not for SHIELD," she promises, "for the team. You know, doing time on the side of good, making amends.."

"That sounds horrific," he has to note.

"You've got a better idea for your atonement?"

He doesn't, actually.

\---

Sif follows down the Bifrost a few hours later, and The Avengers have another Asgardian to set up for the time being.

"Thor called for me, and I am here."

"I called months ago, before the bridge was stable," Thor goggles.

Sif shrugs. "I find myself in need of a changed environment."

Clint thinks she's pining for Thor, and Darcy could kind of see it, 'cause she obviously loves him. But she gives Jane a wide berth, cautious and overly polite, so it can't be that. Still, they can always use another warrior on the back-up team, and within days she's shadowing Natasha, grinning like a kid at Disneyland. Fucking weird Asgardians.

\---

"Get up, Bowie, we're going to Ikea."

Loki, for the thousandth time that week, wishes for his strength back, and the force to do proper magic, if only to implement a severe protection charm over his lodgings. As it is, he's thinking about installing some kind of Darcy alarm, because he knows she's got a key, and he knows he didn't give it to her, no matter how disoriented he was in those first days post-banishment.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says, and curls deeper into the bedclothes, because it's raining outside and his weak mortal body needs the rest.

"You're sulking, it's disgusting, knock it off."

He cracks an eye open, tries to muster some menace into it. She's smiling at him.

"Drink this," she says, thrusting a paper cup at his face.

It's quite difficult to despise humanity when it's dragging you out of bed in the morning and shoving coffee and scones at you.

Apparently he needs furniture.

He has a mattress and an iron bed frame, both new and sturdy; they arrived at the apartment just before he did, and he suspects it was Thor's doing. His few clothes are hanging in the closet--the black garments from SHIELD have been ceremonially burned on the roof of Darcy's building, and she'd procured for him a selection of soft t-shirts and sweaters and denim pants like the mortals ubiquitously wear, shiny-new leather shoes and a long coat that he would even have picked out for himself.

"It's dashing," she'd insisted, when he looked at her in askance, and he honestly couldn't tell if she was making fun of him or trying to cheer him up. Possibly both.

But the apartment: it has heat and electricity. He has towels and shampoo and toothpaste. He has a variety of multivitamins to ensure his fragile human body stays intact, for Odin took his godlike strength but did nothing to his mortality. Still, he'd better take care of this form, susceptible to Midgardian viruses and harms.

There are an assortment of fresh fruits and unappealing frozen dinners sitting in the refrigerator. There's nothing else he needs, as far as he is concerned, but Darcy Lewis disagrees.

 **"** Have you seen this place," she asks, and without waiting for an answer explains that this (arm waved to encompass the bare walls, unshaded windows and empty spaces) is not how people live.

"I do not intend to stay here long."

She huffs a breath that he can read like a speech. _Yes, fine, you want to do things, be free, but Fury isn't letting you out of his sight for a while yet, and where are you going to go anyway?_  
  
Ugh, he can even hear her.

" _Fine._ Wait in the other room while I dress."

It's his ninth day in the apartment Thor and Coulson and Captain America and Iron Man and Pepper Potts and Darcy and too many other people arranged for him to move into, in Brooklyn; his ninth day free of constant SHIELD supervision. There are two guards on duty outside the lobby at all times, badly disguised as door attendants, and while there are other SHIELD employees living in the building, he has no doubt they're watching him especially.

They pass them on the way out the door, and Darcy makes a face at the one on the left and tugs Loki along by his elbow, dragging him into the first taxi she spies.

Ikea is a maze of a retail environment, and Loki is taken aback by the way everything seems to bear labels that permute names he encountered on one of his last visits to Midgard, centuries ago.

"But most of these words are place names, or nouns, " he can't help but note, spying a table lamp labelled _Egby_ , which he's quite certain is a village he's visited a few hundred years ago. "Why use them to describe furniture?"

"Sweden," Darcy shrugs,  like that's an answer. She grabs a plastic yellow carrier bag from the nearby rack. "Come on, you need kitchen stuff."

Shopping is more time-consuming than he would have expected, and they are there for most of the day. It's a very human kind of day, and he's almost pleased about how ordinary it turns out, that no one recognizes him. He's glamoured himself unremarkable, using the simplest of the magic left to him, so inborn it's almost instinct, and his appearance remains the same but the mortals milling about take no notice of him. Darcy, on the other hand, is recognized once as "The Avengers' helper girl," (she smiles) and once as "the superhero groupie," (he restrains her).

He ends up with too many purchases to transport back to the apartment, but Darcy has skills in shopping that outshine Thor's in battle, and she engages the customer service department in a rapid fire duel of words that involve the phrases "free of charge," and "no, _today_ ," more than he cares to follow.

The results of this are that his sofa is being unloaded from a delivery truck just as they arrive back in Brooklyn. They order Thai food and attempt to assemble the bookshelves, and it's not an entirely unpleasant day.  

\---

The next day is a little worse. There's an attack on Avengers Tower -- that's a trend he didn't intend to start -- and the main target appears to be Stark's lab. The news, when he gets it, startles him more than he would have thought. Jane Foster was injured in the blasts.

He hears about it from Steve Rogers, of all people.

"They're at Lenox Hill Hospital," the Captain tells him, voice coming loud down the iPhone Darcy gifted to him last week. Loki has his coat on and apartment keys in hand before the man finally spits out the address.

Darcy's arguing with the desk attendant when he arrives.

"Oh, good, you're here. Thor's waiting," she gestures vaguely up the hallway, "go sit with him."

For reasons he doesn't quite understand, he does just that. He sits next to his brother in the uncomfortable chairs for four hours. Neither of them say anything, but Thor relaxes slightly when Loki first sits down, and doesn't tense up again.

Darcy reappears near dusk, her jacket splattered with rain, and he realises she's left the building in the meantime. Tell you later, her expressive eyebrows inform him, and he knows better than to make a comment in front of Thor.

"She's out of surgery," she says pointedly, "you can go see her now."

Thor's halfway down the hall before the words are fully out of her mouth.

"The Chitauri," Loki comments, because they took his magic but even Odin couldn't touch his intuition.

"They're done," she swears. Her face is guarded, stricken. "It was just a handful of them, trying out some revenge-crazy plot. You know how it is."

Oh, does he.

"They put a nice dent in the Tower, and the lab is toast, but they're out of commision now. Bruce and Tony took care of it, we should be in the clear. Fury's on cleanup duty."

He has to point it out: "They only want revenge because I led them to believe conquering this world was possible."

"They don't want anything now," which is surprisingly ominous coming from her.

She leads him out of the waiting room by the hand and through meandering hallways, up a flight of stairs, and into the private room Stark money is undoubtedly paying for.

Jane is asleep and expected to make a full recovery, and Thor is testing the strength of the hospital bed, having climbed into it to lay alongside, one arm curled gently around her tiny form. It always surprises him to see his brother, the war lord, be gentle. It shouldn't.

\---

Things happen. Life continues. The stories are all out there already -- the Skrull invasion, the Atlantis attacks, Thanos -- all the disasters narrowly averted by Earth's Mightiest Heroes and their Most Caffeinated Helpers (Darcy currently holds the trademark on that phrase; Stark bought it for her birthday gift.)

Loki's around. He's staying, for now, since he can't easily leave the planet. Without his stronger magics won't survive long in either the outer atmosphere or the roots of Yggdrasil. He tries to get used to his newest life. He... works.

"An idle mind is the devil's playground," Banner notes, the first time he's dragged into the lab by a recuperating Jane. That seems to be an excuse to give him the most tediously long equations, but it bothers him less than he lets on.

The X-Men attempted to steal him away after the first couple times he was allowed in the field, and Tony got into a bitchfight with Wolverine, and now this year there isn't going to be a joint superhero picnic, which suits everybody just fine because those were a stupid idea in the first place.

Things happen, and he's around.

\---

He doesn't do it alone -- he actually can't do it alone, isn't supposed to be let alone during any operation, but they all get a little lax about that rule after a few years, let him roam the halls of Avengers Tower unattended.

Hawkeye avoids him like the plague, and he knows why: that mind-control business disturbs the archer, shakes his faith in his own heart. He killed, for Loki, and thought nothing of it. Loki wants to tell him that it's all right, that others have done worse under his power.

It's absurd, wanting to comfort the man, but he feels guilty over the hawk in ways he can't bring himself to for the rest of the city, the rest of the world. Perhaps it's because he hasn't met those other people (or if he has, maybe they don't deserve his mercy), but he knows Clint Barton now -- knows how absurdly enamoured of him Darcy is, how protective he is of Banner and Romanov, how he enters a room and immediately flees to the farthest corner, or window.

Odin and Laufey used Loki as a pawn in their plots, and he has done the same to so many others. He will not be doing that again.

He mentions this to Darcy the first night they go to a bar ("You have not experienced the full potential of human civilization until you try a margarita," she insisted), the night they learn that he is now susceptible to alcohol and she has to get Thor to come collect them because he's too big and too wasted for her to get home alone.

He never says anything about it again, but she must have talked to Barton, because he stops avoiding his eyes in assemblies, even addresses him by name occasionally.

It's a cheap forgiveness, but he's still grateful for it.

\---

Time doesn't ever pass quickly for him after he accepts his exile. His limitations. The magic still burns within him, and some of it does return, over time. His glamours are as solid and convincing as they've always been (the Asgardian appearance holds, and he is pale but never blue) but the binding's other effects on him are startling.

He makes himself invisible one afternoon and darts through Stark Tower -- the Widow had mentioned that it is a custom on the first of April to "mess with people, that sounds like your kind of thing -- _nothing violent or psychologically damaging_ ," and given those parameters he's left with few options but to swap everyone's coffee for salt water and turn pencils into worms. These are the sort of pranks he's not played since he was a small child, and a waste of his talents, but it's an enjoyable afternoon, particularly after Thor catches on and starts laughing uncontrollably in the middle of a debriefing with Fury.

Loki is pleased with himself, and he feels light, unburdened. But later he is _tired_.

Darcy sidles up to him as he materializes in the hallway and stalks toward the elevator that will carry him to the fourth sub-level, and Jane's laboratory/lair.

"What's the what, villain? You look like a drag."

"I wonder what it says about my acclimation to this backwoods realm that I can decipher your speech."

"Don't be that way. Come on," she drags him by the arm into her office, (well, Jane's office, but she lives in the lab anyway), settles him in the armchair she conned off Stark and starts digging around under the desk. "We're talking about feelings, remember? No more keeping things bottled up inside."

"I never agreed to that."

A package of Fig Newtons appears on the desk, and she follows that up with a bag of mini Oreos.

"Tell me what's got you looking all kicked-puppy and you can have _snacks_ ," she tempts.

He'd like to tell her to jump off the building and conjure up his own plate of cookies, but the thought of exerting himself that much is unbearable. Instead he gingerly reaches for the cookies and outlines his problem:

"I've come to the realization that I nearly mortal now, and subject to new ailments. Fatigue is more difficult to handle than I anticipated."

"What, gods don't get tired?"

"Frost Giants do," he reminds her what he is, what he will always truly be no matter what family claims him, what realm he lives in. "But from battle or questing or difficult scheming, not from simply being."

Not from this weary business of being alive. He used to go for weeks without sleep, used to traverse worlds in a single step. Now he takes the subway and drinks coffee, and twice he has asked the Black Widow for some of her tobacco-sticks, taken them out onto to the cold roof of the Tower to watch the sun come up. Things like the sun rising were not so comforting to him, before.

He waits for the girl to interrupt, because she's Darcy Lewis and interrupting is her game, but she doesn't, and he finds himself talking more. He talks about everything, about nothing, for a long while.

About some mornings his head aches and he doesn't know why. How sometimes he wishes he didn't have to wake up at all, and other times his old life seems infinitely far away. How he doesn't know the future and it frightens him.

Talks about the Avengers, too. How Natasha Romanov will never forgive him for the things he said to her when they first met, but he knows she's already forgiven the destruction he caused. How Coulson is only interested in him as a resource for SHIELD and the team, and has no apparent desire for revenge. How Thor talks about taking Jane to visit Asgard, and will he consider joining them if permission can be obtained?

He tells her how he doesn't mind it when the sounds of birds or children playing outside wake him up in the early morning, but the noise of construction irritates him to no end. How he cuts himself shaving and it takes forever for the broken sin to heal, and wearing a band-aid on his face just looks idiotic, and how has mankind not solved such a simple problem yet? He talks about orange juice and _Lost_ and all the best parts of being stuck on Earth he never would have anticipated. And all the worst parts, too.

She smiles at him with one side of her mouth, when he finishes rambling.

"Feel better?"

"Not really, no."

"Yeah, that happens."

Even though he can tell she's about to hug him, he pretends he doesn't know. He still groans when she does it, though.

\--

At the next Christmas party (the X-Men are invited this year, to make up for the cancelled picnic and restore the goodwill between their teams, etc), he goes, because Jane shows up at his door with a fine suit and a bottle of wine that, while not strong enough to make him intoxicated, is certainly expensive enough to show that she means business.

"If you want them to stop being afraid of you, you're going to have to suck it up and go to these kinds of things."

"I don't want them to stop being afraid of me," because that's never even crossed his mind. Somehow he ends up putting on the suit and following her and his brother to the ballroom Stark reserved in midtown.

He does like the suit, keeps toying with the cuffs. He's been living in dark jeans and button-down shirts the last few months, the clothes Darcy picked out for him in the early days of the exile. His shirts have all gone soft from laundering, and last week he caught his reflection in the window at Bloomingdale's (Sif dragged him out to find shoes for the party-- she's clearly been spending too much time with Black Widow) and it took him a second to recognize his own face.

But this suit is crisp and fits him like armour; makes him feel strong in ways he hasn't in years. He feels a little invincible, like he could do anything.

It's absurd to base such feelings off of clothing, but that's what he's thinking about when Darcy sidles up next to him and whistles.

"Nice," she says, "sharp. A little stern, a little _I'm-the-god-of-mischief-and-I'm-plotting-your-demise_ , but I think that's just you being you. I dig the outfit."

"Jane picked it out," he tells her, for reasons he cannot fathom. The _you being you_ hit perhaps too close to his own thoughts.

"Of course she did, didn't want to be embarrassed by the likes of you." This from Selvig, who looks to be three drinks ahead of everyone else but all the more jovial for it. "Well, stay strong kids. You're behaving yourself and Thor's staying away from the mead. We might yet make it through this thing without any homicide."

It's a near thing during the speeches, when Stark makes a jab at one of the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer needs to be restrained, but by desert the tensions have eased. Then someone decides there haven't been enough speeches, and his brother swipes the microphone off the stage.

"Second string assemble!" he shouts, and they all laugh that surprised laugh that comes from hearing Thor attempt a Midgardian reference and get it right.

Clint and Natasha are grinning, intoxicated. "Yeah, let's hear from the backup squad. You guys work almost as hard as we do."

"Harder," somebody in the crowd says, and the chuckles roll over them.

"Darcy!" Banner calls, "where's Darcy?"

Darcy doesn't blush, because that's not who she is, but a grin settles on her lips and she looks  significantly at the chair Selvig's sitting on. He rolls his eyes and rises so she can clamber up and address the crowd. She even slips Loki's desert spoon out of his hand, clinks it against her own wine glass.

"All right, B-squad, gather round," she calls, and three or four hundred people look to her expectantly.

"Sometimes the papers and SHIELD and the government forget it, but these guys over here," she waves to the corner where the heroes are seated, "don't do it all alone. Everyone in this room is part of the Avengers Initiative. So I'm gonna thank us, personally, on behalf of our resident superheroes, who might be too busy doing the heavy lifting to remember some of our names. That's all cool though, because Tony paid for this wicked party--" more cheering "--and without them we'd all be out of a job."

She takes a gulp of her champagne, for courage or possibly refreshment. It's hard to tell, with Darcy.

And she does it. Thanks every single member of the admin team she helped put together. She's quick about it, snappy and clever, working in jokes about the actual Avengers whenever she can. She starts with Jane "the smartest person in this room, and I dare Tony or Bruce to say otherwise," works her way through to Coulson "our resident hero wrangler and part-time SHIELD liaison," and finishes up with Pepper Potts, "without whom actually nothing would ever get done."

Not everyone gets a long description; there are far too many people to mention in too short a span of time. So it's not that awkward when she drops his name in between Kingston, the chief helicarrier technician, and Maria Hill.

There are some sidelong looks in his direction, some startled expressions in the crowd from those who didn't know, but he's been getting those looks all his life.

"We don't get to be on the posters," she finishes, "or have action figures made, but that's okay. We know what we're doing, and that's all the credit we need. To all of us!"

The room drinks with a raucous cheer, and the noise rises back into deafening leaves as the band starts up again.

These people can stare if they want; he's got Darcy in his corner, and he automatically reaches over to help her down from the chair, lest her ridiculous shoes send her tottering to her death.

"That was a fine speech," he says, after. "Very _you being you_."

\---

Later, he will think about her words more than he perhaps should.

He's not a part of the team, but that's all right. Neither are Jane or Selvig or Darcy, Coulson or Hill. Nick Fury, for all his blustering, is a much smaller man than this group he's put together, much weaker than even each Avenger individually. He is nothing compared to this assemblage, yet they are the ones who make it float.

He wonders when it was he started enjoying the work.

\---

There's one other thing that comes of the Christmas party, and it's an awkward conversation. Erik finds him at the end of the night -- Thor's gone for the car with Jane and he's queueing for their coats -- and gives him a very vague, protective warning.

He calls Darcy the next day to tell her.

"Selvig believes I'm harbouring designs on your virtue," he says.

"Ha," Darcy crows, long and thrilled. "I dare you to say that to Clint."

Hawkeye has as of late been dealing personally with Darcy Lewis's virtue, though Loki finds he'd rather not know about that. Hearing about Thor's romantic life is nauseating enough.

Still, this can't be allowed to stand.

"He says I have feelings for you."

"You mean feelings besides the abject loathing?" she mocks. "Like, romantic feelings? Nah, I don't believe it."

"Because you are not a fool," and it's very nearly the highest compliment he's ever given her. "But I am concerned. Thor keeps making reference to my infatuation, and refuses to believe I have none."

It's been awhile since Loki's had to worry about social awkwardness -- or, rather, since his fall to Earth he's existed in a constant state of social awkwardness -- but he'd really rather not all the Avengers believe him in love with his-- with Darcy.

She snorts again, unable to contain the laughter. "Dude. Quick question: how long have you known me?"

He casts his mind back. "Three years, I suppose. It seems much longer, but that might be the binding--"

"And how long has it been since Sif sauntered down the Bifrost?"

"Two years and three weeks," he answers.

Darcy pauses a long moment, waiting for him to say something.

"No? Really?"

"What?"

"Fucking Asgardians. Okay, are you at your place?"

"Yes."

"Stay there, I'm bringing pizza and John Hughes movies, and then I'll explain how we helpless mortals go about romance."

\--

"I didn't realize," he says, when she hits pause halfway through _Pretty in Pink_ and looks at him significantly. "I didn't -- this concept is foreign at home. Romances are  much more structured, courting is-- I didn't _know_."

"Really. Because I think almost everybody else did."

"You're joking."

She smirks at him, and his stomach drops.

"You're not joking. Fuck. Are _all_ mortal emotions so obvious?"

"Bowie, how long have you been harbouring these intense feelings-type-things for your brother's best pal?"

He says nothing, and she whistles.

"Longer than the Earth's been turning, am I right? Yeah, you are so screwed."

\---

After which there was much plotting and wine and take-out, and half a dozen failed plans to win Loki the girl. Jane claims it's a better use of his time than trying to take over the planet anyway, and he's inclined to agree.

\---

(Sif, it turns out, has been nursing an affection of her own.

It still takes another year for them to get together, because he's never been anything but a coward. She doesn't seem to mind.)

\---

It's on the anniversary of his fifth straight year on Earth--it's _Earth_ , not Midgard, he's trying to train himself to talk like the mortals do--that he foils Doctor Doom's latest plot all on his own, mostly by accident.

The Avengers are up on the helicarrier, en route to Latveria. Stark's intel says that's where the signal is broadcasting from, the tectonic signal that's causing increasingly devastating earthquakes up and down the eastern seaboard, and they've seen nothing to contradict that. Not until Loki picks up a signal of his own -- a tingle on the back of his neck that feels so wrong, so off, and he knows right away that Stark's been fed faulty readings.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't even think to bring his findings forward. Later, when the crisis is over, Thor will ask if it was fear that kept him silent.

"The worry that we would not trust you, the trickster, above the man of iron?" is how he will phrase it, concern creasing his brows. Still so worried for Loki's self-esteem.

Maybe that was part of the reason; mostly he's in too much of a hurry to think about alerting anyone else. The signal's only getting stronger, and the terror on the news screens in the disaster room at the Tower is too much for him to handle.

He runs. He can't leap over geography anymore, but he can sure as hell steal one of the cars in the parking garage. He finds the earthquake machine in a warehouse in New Jersey (how unimaginative).

Once disabling the machine would have been as easy as snapping his fingers; that day, the surge of magic needed to do so costs him ten hours of consciousness. When he wakes up the tectonic resonator is mostly ashes and singed metal, and Doom is long gone, and it's only sheer luck that has the helicarrier intercepting him over the Atlantic.

He's off the grid for a full day, by the time SHIELD tracks him down and sends a helicopter. The pilots don't seem to know whether to treat him as a prisoner or a colleague, and he's not sure either.

\---

It's early morning at the Tower, and they've all been awake far too long, Avengers and backup alike assembled around the long conference table in Stark's penthouse for the debriefing. The others all have their own levels in the Tower -- he's only seen Thor's floor, where he's shuffled various Asgardian relics and installed the world's most improbable swimming pool.

Everyone looks thoroughly miserable. Darcy's pouring coffee relentlessly, pushing it in all directions, and only stops chattering when Nick Fury stalks into the room, flanked by Agent Coulson (carrying a stack of newspapers) and Pepper Potts. For a moment, Loki's certain he's going back into the solitary underground cell.

"Loki goddamn fucking Odinson, you are one lucky bastard," Fury says.

The room inhales collectively.

Coulson drops the _Times_ down in front of him. "We can't incarcerate a hero."

"What," he says.

The headline screams LOKI DEFEATS DOOM, and the body text is a rough estimation of yesterday's events, badly embellished. Whoever wrote it has attached far too much significance to his decision to steal Stark's car. They also appear to be labouring under the delusion that he's involved with Darcy (she snickers, reading over his shoulder)

The rest of the group paws through the other papers, and he doesn't doubt it's all the same story. He's aware of them--of Banner muttering in Stark's ear and the resulting chuckle that holds no malice; of the brief smile that flickers over Clint Barton's face as he scans his copy; of the stronger one plastered onto his brother's face, since he's never been good at hiding his emotions and wants them all to see how proud he is; of Natasha's raised eyebrows and blank expression, because she's very different from Thor and never wears her opinions where they'd be visible; of Coulson's stare and Fury's anxiety; of Sif gripping his hand under the table, her soft palm closing around his shaking wrist. He's aware of the tension seeping out of the space around them, the casual acceptance his story has elicited. 

There's no new picture of him, but they've pulled a stock one somebody snapped the last time he forgot to use the glamour in public and was recognized. He's standing on the corner of his street, about to step off the curb, and he's wearing the clothes Darcy picked out and a canvas jacket he bought at Saks and the scarf Thor gave him last winter. There's a tote bag spilling loose-leaf paper slung over his shoulder--he must have brought one of the interns' Bifrost logs home to read over, but he can't quite remember for sure. He doesn't look like himself, he's pretty sure, but then maybe he does.

And why is this such news, that he's working on the side of good? He lives here, after all; he's not going to let some moronic madman destroy his home--

Oh.

Pepper clears her throat from the doorway, and the whole room looks over.

"I'd get some rest," she tells Loki. "You're on _Good Morning, America_ tomorrow."

 

**Author's Note:**

> In my google docs, this is titled "oh god why", and that pretty much sums up how it got written. I don't know / I'm sorry? The world just needed more Darcy & Loki friend fic, damn it. 
> 
> Darcy being adopted comes from "Simple, Not Easy" by LJC, as do probably many other things in this fic that I didn't notice I was ripping off. Actually, please just go read that story, it's much better than this one.
> 
> I am now on [tumblr](http://missgoodboots.tumblr.com/), because that's where fandom lives, apparently.


End file.
